


Rue

by the_alchemist



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:52:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2843660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/pseuds/the_alchemist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dark fix-it fic about Hamlet and Ophelia's love affair, inspired by a piece called 'By the way, Ophelia is pregnant' (http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com/ophelia.html).</p><p>Content warnings for greater-than-canon levels of misogyny, sexual assault, and abortion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lizimajig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizimajig/gifts).



Love, she thought, would be something that came all at once, overwhelming her in a tidal wave of passion. It wouldn’t be something that crept over her by degrees. She was wrong.

Every since she was tiny she’d imagined going on adventures with Hamlet, taking care of him, rescuing him and being rescued. As she grew, the nature of these fantasies changed, little by little, until the rescuing became little more than a perfunctory excuse for the long, naked embraces that followed. She didn’t even notice the first time her hands crept between her legs, didn’t understand what it meant.

In the Elsinore’s chapel, there was a stained glass window depicting the annunciation. Ophelia spent many hours in prayer staring up at the blue-clad virgin.

Virginity, she thought, would be something that went all at once, on her wedding night, with blood, and pain and, judging from overheard conversations between giggling maidservants, perhaps a little pleasure too. She didn’t connect it with what she did alone in her bed at night. And, as she grew a little older, she didn’t connect it with what happened when she shared Hamlet’s bed.

It started as a joke on a cold night. He said he was cold and wanted her to warm him. She blinked and swallowed. It was altogether too much like her fantasies: caught out after the castle gates shut and huddling in the snow; surviving locked up together in a Polish dungeon. The first night, they held one another, but nothing else happened.

But there was a second time, and when Hamlet noticed what Ophelia was doing with her hand he was curious about it. Giggling, they confessed to each other the things they had discovered about their own bodies.

The third time, they began to experiment with what they could do to each other.

And so it went on.

If you’d asked Ophelia whether she was a virgin on the day Hamlet left for Wittenberg, then she would have said of course she was, but by the time he got back, her swelling belly told a different tale.

He will marry me, she told herself, as she ordered the tailor to make her a loose gown for mourning the King. ‘It’s the fashion,’ she said airily. ‘Laertes has written to me from Paris, and says all the Parisian girls are wearing them.’ To her amusement, she was believed, and the daughters of the lesser nobility started dressing in the same style.

Of course, everyone would know from the timing of it, but once he wedded her, that would no longer matter. They had spoken between themselves of marriage, and Hamlet had spoken to his mother too. There would be no bar to it.

 

Despite the loose gown, he knew without being told. She had expected him to take her in his arms and tell her it would be all right, but instead he went away, saying he needed to think.

It was only to be expected, she told herself. He had taken his father’s death badly, and his mother’s marriage worse. It's too much for him all at once, but that doesn't mean

He came back after several hours, took her by the cunt and pushed her against the wall, keeping her at arms length and staring at her face. He didn’t say a word, but only sighed, then backed away, staring at her.

And Ophelia knew there would be no proposal of marriage.

She wished with all her heart for a friend of her sex, but her playmates had always been Hamlet and Laertes, and her mother had died many years ago. She only knew of the things girls speak of when alone through eavesdropping on the servants. But that had at least been an education of sorts. One of the undercooks, a hairy-chinned old matron called Hilda, knew things that could help her.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘I think ... I mean, someone told me, that if a girl is with child and wants to get rid of it there’s something that can be done.’

_There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me._

The next time she saw Hamlet, he grabbed her belly and called her a ‘breeder of sinners’. She had the rue, but hadn’t done anything with it. Each night she took it out of the little box by her bedside and stared at it. One more day, she told herself. Perhaps his madness will pass. One more day.

Rumour whispered the news of her father’s death before Queen Gertrude could break it to her. She wanted to cry or scream, but good breeding had taken that from her, so instead she sang.

That night, she knew it was time.

 

She understood there would be a mess, so she didn’t do it in her chambers. By the river was the place. If it didn’t work, or if the pain was too much to bear, that would provide her with another way out. She had wondered about lighting a fire out here, the way she and Hamlet and Laertes did when they were small, playing at camping, but decided there was too much that could go wrong, so she made the rue tea in advance and carefully laid two bottles of it in her basket.

It was a peaceful evening, the weather mild and the sky cloudless. A nightingale was singing, and a family of weasels were frisking about on the riverbank. A little of that peace made its way into her heart as she drank. It was bitter and unpleasant, but that was only fitting. She would have found it harder to stomach had it been sweet.

The pains started to come almost straight away, strong from the beginning, but getting more intense. Ophelia found herself thinking about her mother, ten years dead, killed by giving birth to a sickly little boy, who also died. Would things have been different if she had a younger brother, she wondered?

Several hours later, as the pain reached its height, she found herself calling out ‘Mama!’ too far gone to care or even think about being overheard.

She had spent many hours imagining it since making the decision, what it would feel like when the little corpse slithered out from between her legs. She thought perhaps she would see herself as Hamlet saw her: a disgusting, stinking thing, squeezing out death.

She had imagined another outcome too, one of the servants stumbling on her corpse in the cold dawn. Perhaps Hamlet would weep over her then, since they would certainly clean the corpse before letting him see it. Gertrude would probably weep, and Laertes would be inconsolable. It was good that her father would never know.

What she hadn’t imagined was this.

The baby was small, but its lungs were healthy enough as it screwed up its little face and screamed at the hideous unfairness of the world. She picked it up and wrapped it in her mantle, holding it close. Sometimes, love is something that comes all at once.

Still holding the crying child, she crawled on one hand and two knees to the riverbank, as she sat with her bare feet in the water. She held it in such a way that its exploring lips found her breast.

She wondered whether she ought to baptise it before drowning it. It was difficult to say whether that would be more or less of a sin.

‘What are you doing?’ she looked up sharply. It was Hamlet – she hadn’t heard him coming.

She grabbed a handful of crowflowers and held them out to him. ‘Here,’ she said, staring down at the baby, avoiding Hamlet’s eyes.

‘What’s this?’ She assumed he was gesturing at the child. ‘Crowflowers,’ she said.

He was kneeling by her side, reaching out and touching the baby’s little hands. Gently, she slipped into the water. Her daughter wouldn’t die alone, at least, though she cried bitterly from the cold. Better to get it over with, Ophelia supposed, and ducked both of their heads under.

Arms were hauling her out.

‘What are you _doing_?’ Hamlet repeated, but this time his voice shook. Ophelia was lying on the riverbank, looking up at him. She didn’t answer.

Hamlet was holding the baby, inexpertly jiggling it up and down – it was almost funny. That was the last thing Ophelia remembered before she fainted.

 

Queen Gertrude insisted that Hamlet and Ophelia should be married at once, and little Polonia legitimised and baptised. It was a quiet affair, for obvious reasons, not least that Ophelia was still unwell. But that did not stop King Claudius from celebrating in his usual drunken way. And as far as Gertrude was concerned, it was from a surfeit of strong drink that he died.

When she was six months old, Polonia was betrothed to the son of Fortinbras, and thus war was averted. The civil strife between King Hamlet, Queen Ophelia, and her brother took a longer time to heal, but heal it did, and King Hamlet II’s reign was one of the most peaceful in Denmark’s history.


End file.
